by Rachel Lee
“Brain misfire,” he said again. “I must be watching too many true-crime shows or something.”
“Well, as far as I know, the only things of value in here are my tools and supplies. I always lock the house so nobody gets tempted, but the most you could hope to walk out of here with, as long as I don’t leave the house for long, is an expensive bunch of drill bits and socket wrenches. That kind of stuff. If anybody wants any more, I’ll have to be away long enough for them to bring in a moving van.” She shook her head. “Frankly, I worry more about bored kids getting in here and vandalizing things.”
“Makes sense.”
“Which brings us back to vermin in the walls. And I have to get rid of whatever it is, because I’ll be damned if I let Colleen get scared at night.” She sighed. “I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired. Time to call it a day.”
“How about that campout I suggested? If we keep watch together, maybe we can pinpoint the sound.”
“You mean sit up all night? That would kill tomorrow.”
“Or take turns. Did it wake you last night?”
“Maybe. I’m honestly not sure. I was restless to begin with.” Having dreams that would make her blush if she let herself recall them. She felt a faint coloring of her cheeks, probably not enough for him to notice.
“Is it waking Colleen?”
“Sometimes.”
“Then maybe we can count on that. I’ve got a couple of sleeping bags we can use.”
“Okay. It’s worth a try.” Just then she heard a car pull up out front. “That must be Beth coming to get Colleen’s clothes.”
He rose immediately. “I’ll just go home and shower and get those sleeping bags.”
Then he made her heart ache: he went out the back door rather than the front, and she didn’t doubt for a second that he did so in order to avoid being seen by Beth Andrews.
Despite what she had said, he still didn’t want anyone to talk about her and Colleen because of him.
If she let herself think about it, she was quite sure she might have cried.
Mike crossed the backyards and let himself into his own house. And while he had backtracked from his suggestion that someone might be trying to frighten Colleen and Del, he wasn’t sure he believed his own rationalization.
No, there was no logical reason to assume such a thing. At least not one he was aware of. That didn’t mean it wasn’t so.
Nor had the thought been a mere mental misfire. No, it had been an intuition. The kind of intuition he’d been taught as a child not to ignore.
Which left him with a huge cultural gulf he simply didn’t know how to begin to bridge with Del. Most of the things his uncle had taught him as a child, most of the things he had experienced along those lines, were utterly dismissed by the European world. They had no room in their science for the spiritual or mystical.
So how could he even hope to explain it without convincing Del he was a nut?
He climbed into his shower, letting the hot water beat away all the fatigue along with the day’s dust. His past, he thought, not only lay behind him, but it very much lay between him and the world he had adopted.
Maybe he should have listened to his uncle when Walking Crow had told him that he was called, that when the animals spoke to him they were summoning him to be a medicine man. Instead, bullheadedly, he had refused to listen.
But when in his life hadn’t he been torn at least to some degree? Torn between old ways and new ways, torn between his traditional beliefs and the ones he learned at school. While the parochial school had by his time learned to treat his tribal beliefs with respect, the inescapable teaching remained that there was only one true faith…and it wasn’t the faith of the Morning Star People.
He’d melded it all somehow, and sometimes even felt comfortable with it. Until something happened like today, when intuitions rose and goaded him, and he could not ignore them. When the old ways told him one thing, and the logic of the new ways entirely another.
And sometimes he wished Walking Crow were still around, so he could pick up a phone and call his uncle and talk things over.
Something was going on here, but because he’d turned his back on the old ways to a large degree, he didn’t know enough. Not nearly enough.
After he dressed in fresh clothes, he picked up the sleeping bags, left over from when he’d still been in school and he and some buddies had occasionally taken off for a weekend to hike and camp. He filled a canvas tote with snack foods because he didn’t want to burden Del and headed back to her house. Across the backyards. Feeling a bit like a kid who was doing something wrong.
Stupid.
He found Del in Colleen’s room. She had apparently had time to finish vacuuming the room and was now running damp rags over everything, one rag in each head.
Her face looked a little pinched and tired, and he felt badly for her. He doubted he had been anywhere near as much help as he might have been today.
He dropped everything on the clean floor and said, “Let me finish that. You run up and take your shower.”
She barely managed a smile. “Sorry, I’m beat. And I can’t wait to get this dust off. It’s starting to rub me raw in a few places.”
“Then go. You’re not alone now. Shout if anything worries you. In the meantime, I’ll just finish wiping stuff down for you.”
It was easy to see where she had wiped and where he needed to finish up. He felt glad for the simple, mindless task. His thoughts had started to follow disturbing paths, paths that made him feel both mentally and physically edgy.
Finally he paused for a moment in his wiping and closed his eyes. Upstairs he could hear water running, and outside the night was deepening, punctuated by flashes of lightning. In here, a couple of flashlights were all that held darkness at bay.
And some of that darkness seemed to be seeping into him. Something was wrong in this house. Very wrong. And damned if he knew what.
And what an irony it would be if he proved unable to help Del because he had a long time ago refused to follow the Red Road to become a medicine man.
Of course, had he done as his uncle wished, he wouldn’t be here now either.
Sighing, he opened his eyes and resumed wiping at the walls and anything else that looked dusty. The air had cleared considerably, and a fan at the window still sucked the remaining dust out of the room.
And upstairs Del was naked in the shower. Tightening his mouth, he wiped harder. He couldn’t afford to think about that. Couldn’t allow himself the feelings and needs she so easily evoked in him.
What was wrong with him? Once wasn’t enough to tell him where this would lead if he followed his desires?
And Del sure as hell didn’t need this from him now, if she ever would. Right now, it was most important to get to the bottom of what was frightening Colleen. What had managed to frighten Del enough that he’d found her standing outside her own house in the dead of night, reluctant to return.
And he’d heard that damn sound himself. Clearly. More like weary fingers, nails short or gone, making a half-hearted attempt to get attention.
It sure hadn’t sounded like animal claws. He had enough experience to know those sounds as intimately as the sound of his own breathing.
So what the hell was it?
Light suddenly bounced around the room and he turned quickly. Del stood in the doorway carrying a camp lantern, one of those battery-operated things with a fluorescent tube. She wore sweats again, but they seemed to caress her figure rather than conceal it. “Can you breathe?” she asked.
Oh, yeah, he could breathe, and right now he smelled a woman fresh from the shower, still warm from the heat of the water, scented with soap and shampoo. Her hair hung wetly, as if she hadn’t bothered to dry it with more than a towel, and even in the light from that single lantern and the flashlight on the floor he could tell her skin was flushed a healthy pink.
And in that instant he wanted her so much that he gripped the damp towels in his han
ds until his fingers ached. Not even reminding himself of Livvie’s taunts could batter down the sudden surge of aching need.
“Yeah,” he managed to say, aware that his voice sounded oddly thick. He cleared his throat and looked away before he could make a fool of himself. “Yeah,” he said again, more firmly, even though he was lying because right now it felt as if there wasn’t any air left in the room, or in the entire universe. Primitive rhythms beat in his blood, in his loins. He forced himself to take another swipe at the walls.
“It doesn’t have to be perfect,” she said, coming into the room. “As long as we beat the dust down enough to breathe.”
“Just a bit more.” Just a few more swipes until his self-control mastered his more basic urges.
And offering to stay the night here had surely been one of the stupidest things he had done in a long time. He knew better, far better. This woman had a huge “off-limits” sign around her, practically painted in neon. Even if he removed the likelihood that she and her daughter might suffer for getting too close to him, there was her situation. He wasn’t ignorant enough or selfish enough not to realize what she was up against already in her personal life. She didn’t need additional complications of any kind. Least of all him.
So he finished wiping the wall, avoiding looking at her, avoiding the very thing he had set himself up for. Yeah, he needed to go beat his head on a wall until he managed to pound some sense into it, until his head ached so much more than his manhood. He needed to forget he wanted Del Carmody more than he’d wanted anything in a long time.
Behind him he heard her moving around. When at last he felt he had a leash on himself, he turned around to find she had spread the sleeping bags out. And she hadn’t spread them on opposite sides of the small room. Oh, no. Somehow they were only a foot apart on the floor.
Did she have even the least idea?
No, probably not. Why would she? She obviously trusted him, and somehow he had to live up to that. Crap. Right now he had never felt less like living up to anything.
He cleared his throat again. “Where should I toss these rags?”
She came to him immediately and took them. “I’ll just spread them on the washer until I’m ready to do a load. Use the bathroom there.” She nodded to Colleen’s bathroom, behind a closed door, and he headed in there.
The room showed signs of age and wear, with chipped tiles and a tub that looked as if it had seen better years. But just like the bath upstairs, the room was unusually large. People didn’t build them like this anymore. No, you were lucky if you could squeeze into a modern bath.
He washed his hands and forearms and returned to the bedroom. Del was already sitting on one of the sleeping bags, and she offered a smile as he emerged.
“I really appreciate you being willing to do all of this,” she said.
He hesitated only a moment, feeling like the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, before sinking to sit cross-legged on the other sleeping bag. “It’s what neighbors do,” he answered, both seriously and to try to remind himself that that was their only relationship. Distance. He needed to keep the distance.
“Not every neighbor,” she said. “This room isn’t exactly crowded with helping hands.”
He tightened his mouth and gripped his knees with his hands, keeping them safely occupied. “Maybe some aren’t aware you could use some help.”
At that her smile faded a bit. “True. I don’t generally go waving my problems in people’s faces. But I don’t think you do either.”
“No,” he admitted.
“My husband always said I was cussedly independent. I’m not sure he always meant it as a compliment.” Her face shadowed, but then she managed another smile. “Mostly I like the independence of doing my own thing. When I need help I hire it. But…this is different.”
“We’ll get to the bottom of it somehow.”
“I have to. It’s either that or move, and the way I’ve got this place torn up… Well, I suppose I could move us into the house I finished four months ago, but I’m trying to rent it.”
“Do you need the income?”
“From the rental? It would help. I’m okay for now, but there’ll come a point when paying the mortgage on two houses will drain me.”
He nodded. “It must be a load.”
“Not when things go right.” She unfolded her legs and stretched out on the sleeping bag on her side, her head propped on her hand. “I imagine your childhood was a lot different from mine.”
“Life isn’t all that different on the rez.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
He felt an immediate pang of guilt. “Jumping to conclusions again.”
“Yup.” But she smiled at him. “Still, I grew up in the local culture. Your experience had to be somewhat different. For me, I guess the equivalent would have been being born to an immigrant family.” She suddenly held up her hand, “And don’t tell me you folks weren’t the immigrants. I know that.”
He chuckled because he had to. “Well, we were immigrants, too.”
“Ah, but there was no one else here when you arrived.”
“There’s some debate about that, too.”
Her interest clearly perked. “Really?”
He shrugged. “Depends on if we’re being politically correct. Many of my people aren’t pleased when others suggest we weren’t here first. But there’s some evidence in South America that a wave of immigration actually came around from Australia, long before the time dates given for my people. They may have reached as far north as Central America. And there are those Olmec heads.”
“I’ve seen photos of them and always wondered.”
“Other than to clarify prehistory in the Americas, I think it’s pointless to argue about it. My people clearly migrated here, too, whether it was twelve thousand years ago or twenty-five thousand.”
“And apparently all of us came out of Africa.”
“So it would seem. At this point, getting proprietary about things that happened so long ago seems like it should be of interest primarily to academics.”
“Well, we do know who was here when the Europeans arrived.”
He smiled slightly. “Indeed, whether it was the first group of Europeans, or the second, or the third…”
The way he said it made her laugh. “I guess that’s another debate.”
“Endlessly.”
She appeared to hesitate then said, “If I’m treading on toes here, let me know. But you said a couple of things, and they got me curious. Like when you said this house is sad.”
He should have anticipated this. It was bound to come. The question was how frank he wanted to be. And then he decided to just go for it. If she didn’t like it, or treated it as merely interesting lore, what did it really matter? It would start drawing lines, and then he could stand behind them. Safely. Away from the temptation to repeat one of the biggest mistakes of his life.
“My uncle, Walking Crow, was a medicine man. He thought I should follow in his footsteps.”
“Why? Tradition?”
Mike shook his head. “It’s never tradition. It’s about abilities. About being called to take a journey and learn things that aren’t part of your kind of thinking.”
“And you were called?”
“My uncle thought so. I was drawn to animals. I don’t recall my earliest experiences, but he told me when I got older that I shouldn’t ignore the call of the wolf.”
Del sat up. “Meaning?”
“I awoke night after night to find a wolf standing in my bedroom. Or so it seemed.”
“Was it real?”
He hesitated. There was only so much he could share, as his people kept their beliefs very private. And with good reason, given how most non-natives reacted to them, either with disdain and disbelief, or some kind of New Agey cultism.
He spoke carefully. “In the terms of my people, it was real. It was a summons. But I refused to take the Red Road, and instead followed my own path.”
&n
bsp; Del leaned forward, intent. “Why did you refuse?”
“Because…” Again he hesitated. “Because the Red Road is a difficult one and would require a commitment I wasn’t sure I wanted to make. By the time I finished kindergarten, I had conflicting worldviews. Maybe because I was young I wanted to follow the new ways, not the old ones.”
She nodded thoughtfully, clearly interested in what he had to say. But how much could he say? He couldn’t betray what his people chose to keep private.
“So what exactly do you mean by the Red Road?”
Ah, now there was a problem. He sought ways to explain to her without revealing matters he shouldn’t share with an outsider. Finally, he sought refuge in the dry terms of anthropology. “Have you heard of the shamanic path?”
She shook her head. “Not really.”
“Well, let me start by saying my people don’t like the word shaman. Mainly because it’s a Siberian word and has been flung around rather liberally by academics.”
“Okay.”
“I’m just using it here because…well, you’d probably connect with its meaning better than if I resort to our preferred translation, which has plenty of baggage of its own.”
“And that is?”
“Medicine man or woman.”
“Spiritual leader, or healer?”
“Or both. Anyway, if you look into the subject you’ll find the so-called shamanic path, or journey, is strikingly similar across cultures and continents. But the main thing to remember is that it’s a journey. It’s not something you do once—you do it all your life.”
“That is a commitment.”
“And it’s not easy. It involves suffering, sacrifice and a willingness to look into other realities that can be terrifying. Altered states of consciousness, if you prefer the clinical term. I may have been called, but I didn’t answer. I learned one thing at home, and another at school, and finally I opted for what I was learning at school. I sidestepped into the so-called rational world.”
Her brows lifted a bit. “Why do you say so-called?”
“Because mysteries and spirituality exist whether science can explain them or not. This rational world denies those experiences and calls them hallucinations.”